Her camp plans to contest results from 1,000 polling stations. According to maverick MP Taras Chornovil, a former Regionalist, Yanukovych gave free bus rides to about 20% of his voters in eastern Ukraine

“Don’t be afraid. I’m with you!” says a post-election Yanukovych poster that apparently tries to reach out to Orange voters. (H/t http://twitter.com/politiko)

The late British writer Douglas Adams once wrote an anecdote on politics that went something like this: There is a country ruled by monkeys. The people hate being ruled by monkeys, and the monkeys hate the people, and they are all rotten at the business of government anyway. Nevertheless, every five years, the people dutifully go to the polls and vote for another monkey to be their leader. When asked “Why don’t you just stop voting for monkeys, if they’re all so awful?” the people reply, “But if we didn’t vote, the wrong monkey might get in.”

And, indeed, the only choice that Ukraine has had is to vote for monkeys.

In ancient Rome, whenever there was a triumphal march, or even on other occasions, a slave was given the task of walking behind the general or emperor that was being feted and repeating "remember - you are a mortal."

That was the Roman tradition - in order to keep the general or emperor from getting too big for his britches, and pissing of the gods.

I have no doubt that Tymo has learned a lesson here.

There may be some other Ukrainian politicians who have learned a lesson here.

But I have no doubt that the Party of Regions has learned the wrong lesson here, and has come to the wrong conclusions - you can see it already, when bodyguards from the Party of Regions start attacking Serhiy Leshchenko, a journalist, and demanding his camera, for taking pictures of Khmelnytsky arriving at Party of Regions headquarters to engage in talks about forming a "get Yulia" coalition.

http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/59312/

Ukraine has Olympic skating champions, a world chess champion, world boxing champions, European footballer of the year, tennis champions, and other accomplished people.

Yet, what comes out of the Ukrainian political muck is a criminal and his merry band of thieves in the Party of Regions.

It is not only unfortunate, but truly shameful, that Ukraine has elected a неграмотний бовдур - an illiterate criminal - as its president.

It is even worse that Ukraine continues to tolerate a system that is designed to support about 30 oligarchs and their henchmen in lavish wealth and comfort, using and abusing government for that wealth.

I hope that in addition to Tymoshenko, Ukrainians have also learned their lesson.

But given all the brainwashed sovok relics and their progeny who can't think still walking around in Ukraine like zombies - I have my doubts.

I am under impression that Ukranians often choose Russian to underline their opposition in disputes.At least that's what I saw of Rada on Ukranian TV.It's like ukrocans of Quebec, who have to respect French language due to minority's Constitutional right andbeing minority within minority, need to possess both.

I wonder what the picture will look like when Russia and Ukraine complete their next scheduled censuses in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

As a Ukrainian who lives in Ukraine, I support the “one language, one country” formula. If Russia, a federation, maintains one official language (Russian), then Ukraine, a unitary state, too should maintain one official language (Ukrainian).

Ukraine should adhere to a civilized degree of regional diversity, and so should Russia. The double standard must go. Today, Ukraine offers more rights to its ethnic Russians (heavily dissimilated) than Russia does to its ethnic Ukrainians (heavily assimilated).

Well, Ukrainization started from 1923 as Bolsheviks' plan to tear off the empirial past. Unsurprisingly the number of Ukranians became that high. Stalin continued the policy of his predeccessors, right?When Soviet Empire broke up, the population of Ukraine has dropped from 56 mln in 1991 to 31 mln in 2010. Both Russians and Ukranians of Ukraine moved to better places. I suspect Ukranians of Russia also moved somewhere.

You mean 3 years of Ukrainization had created 7.8 million fake Ukrainians in Russia by 1926? It doesn’t make sense to me.

The Ukrainization of the 1920s (Ukrainian korenization) benefited Ukrainian communities throughout the USSR by establishing Ukrainian schools, theaters, newspapers, etc. It primarily dissimilated Ukrainians from Russians without assimilating Russians into Ukrainians. One can think of it as the cultural equivalent of the NEP — an experiment designed to strengthen, not weaken, the Soviet regime.